5 winners (besides Scottie Scheffler) from PGA Tour’s playoffs

Scottie Scheffler is the best golfer on the PGA Tour. That is the least interesting but most true sentence we’ll include here, but it’s worth establishing off the top; Scheffler reaffirmed his position atop the game at Sunday’s Tour Championship with a round of 66 that catapulted him past the 54-hole leaders and broke the collective spirit of every other player in contention.

Scheffler’s season had been notably strange because he finished second place five different times to five different very worthy opponents. But on Sunday he got the last laugh; for the second time in three weeks, he left all five in the dust. Jackson Koivun (who beat him at the 3M Open) was at home; his next shot at Scheffler will come in 2027. Matt Fitzpatrick (who beat him at the RBC Heritage) was well off the pace in a share of 21st. Cameron Young (who beat him at the Cadillac) was unable to summon any momentum en route to T11. Rory McIlroy (who beat him at the Masters) started too far back to challenge and finished T4. And Viktor Hovland (who beat him at the Travelers) began Sunday three shots ahead of Scheffler but finished three shots behind.

“He’s just good, and he played good every day,” Hovland said by way of explanation. That may be truer than my first sentence, actually. Then he added this, which was more descriptive:

“Today it wasn’t like anybody else really played all that great in contention, and that’s what you see, a lot of guys just gagging and throwing up, and that’s where he just kind of stays in it and shoots a nice score. That gets the job done.”

Anyway, that’s our obligatory nod to the king, and we’ll continue to spread Scheffler praise throughout the offseason. But it’s not why we’re here. We’re here to pick out some winners from the losers, of which there are many. The PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup Playoffs are in the books. Scheffler has finished his celebratory beer. Here’s who else is leaving happy.

Matt McCarty (and the top 50s)

Playing professional golf means you’re always on some sort of bubble, but perhaps this playoffs’ most important threshold was the top 50 at the conclusion of the FedEx St. Jude Championship. The first man out was Keith Mitchell at No. 51, and the last man in was Matt McCarty at No. 50. McCarty and the fellas just ahead of him (No. 49 Mav McNealy, No. 48 Eric Cole, No. 47 Michael Brennan, etc.) find themselves in a doubly advantageous position heading to 2027. For one thing, they’re in all the Signature Events, which means big points and big money. Even better, being in those Signature Events gives them a massive advantage in terms of securing top-90 status for 2028, when the Tour establishes its two-tier tour even more officially.

So, yeah. McCarty finished T33 at the BMW Championship and didn’t advance further. He doesn’t have a top 20 since early May. But he emerges a winner nonetheless, because of where he’ll begin next season’s campaign.

Adam Scott (and the 40s)

I left the Tour Championship feeling secondhand frustration for Adam Scott, who effectively gave away three shots on the way home at East Lake — he finished 5-5-5 on two par-4s and the gettable par-5 18th — and finished T11 when he could have conceivably shared second with Hovland.

But in the bigger picture, Scott emerged from this season a big-time winner; he played his way back into the Tour’s top 30, he finished his season with four consecutive finishes of T16 or better, he all but secured his spot in next year’s majors and he showed that he should be a factor on next year’s Tour, plus the new edition for 2028. He’ll be 48 when that season finishes. At the moment that number doesn’t seem particularly relevant.

Shoutout also to Scott’s 40something compatriots, Justin Rose and Gary Woodland. Rose made an ace on Sunday, an exclamation point on a season that included a win and a berth at East Lake. Woodland seemed to finally run out of steam with a Sunday 77, the closing round on an inspiring year that included the most impressive victory on the Tour’s schedule.

For all three, getting to East Lake marked a massive accomplishment and a testament to consistent, season-long competitiveness.

The Fitzpatrick bros (and their top-30s)

Matt Fitzpatrick didn’t exactly light it up in the playoffs; his T12-T28-T21 trio was fine but won’t mark a particularly memorable finish to an otherwise spectacular three-win PGA Tour season. The finish to his younger brother’s season wasn’t looking particularly shiny, either; after exploding onto the scene earlier this summer, Alex Fitzpatrick entered East Lake on a MC-T71-T61-T61-T44 run of mediocrity.

But then Alex shot a Sunday 66 that tied for low round of the day and boosted him to T4 for the week. That brought all sorts of good feelings to the fore, reminding us just how special it was for two brothers to be among the Tour’s elite. The Fitzpatrick family made up 6.7 percent of the Tour Championship field! And that was all possible thanks to Matt, whose 72nd-hole bunker shot at the Zurich Classic may be the most meaningful shot of the year as well as the biggest you-owe-me moment in big-brother history.

So Alex’s T4 cast a positive light on his incredible rise. It also reminded us how good Matt’s year was. Should be a happy holiday season at home.

The Podium Boys (and exploring in their late 20s)

Two of the Tour’s more intriguing characters, Viktor Hovland and Ryan Gerard, finished 2-3 on Sunday at East Lake, earning some extra cash ($5 million and $3.7 million, respectively) and hopefully some extra confidence, too, despite being steamrolled by Human Compactor Scottie Scheffler.

They say your 20s are all about exploring. Gerard’s journey takes him next to Switzerland, a classic Eurotrip that we assume will include some soul-searching and scenic golf before he heads back stateside to (his potential spot playing for the U.S. in) the Presidents Cup. Hovland’s future whereabouts are unknown, but we know his ongoing, yearslong journey will continue: his quest to own his golf swing, which lives somewhere between his ears and his nearest driving range but has no final destination.

The journey is more important than the destination, and it’s nice to have both of these guys as part of the fabric of our golfing lives.

Wyndham Clark (and his 10/10 turnaround season)

With that last parenthetical the sub-headings on this piece have officially gotten a bit overwrought, but oh well. We can’t all finish the season on our best foot, not even Clark, whose T21 at East Lake was fitting, in some ways. Clark had three wins, including the U.S. Open and a playoff event. He only had three other top 10s. And really, once you have the three wins, who cares about the top 10s?

As so, while he won’t win any awards for consistency, Clark’s comeback from poor form both on- and off-course in 2025 was impressive to behold, most recently as he held off Rory McIlroy with some late heroics at Bellerive.

As for his offseason?

“Presidents Cup, I’m playing a tournament in Japan, hopefully get engaged, and then going to South Africa for a tournament as well,” Clark said in Atlanta. One of those things is not like the other, but there’s still a theme here: It’s a good time to be Wyndham Clark.

Even if he, like the rest of the golfing world, is still staring up at Scottie Scheffler.

Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at dylan_dethier@golf.com.

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